There was only one move she could make.
Chapter 40
Impossible Force
Emma ran.
She didn’t think. Didn’t plan. Her body simply responded to a truth written into her bones: Zach Steele would not die while she stood and watched.
Her legs proved stronger than expected, carrying her across the rain-slicked stone at a sprint. She threw herself into the space between Zach and the gun, arms spread, making as broad a target as possible.
“No.”
The word came out firm and final. Not a plea—a declaration.
Marcus' expression flickered. For the first time, something beyond smug control showed through—genuine surprise, maybe a flash of respect.
His aim shifted.
The gun tracked from Zach to Emma with mechanical precision.
“You first then,” he said. “To be honest, I always wanted him to see you die. What better way to compromise him than to make him watch someone he cares for bleed out?”
His finger moved to the trigger. “The great protector fails. Perhaps one bullet will take care of you both.”
Behind her, Zach made a sound—something between a growl and her name—as he tried desperately to move, to reach her, to somehow change the trajectory of the next few seconds.
Too late. Too slow.
Emma’s hand tightened around the Windstone.
This time, shechoseit.
She didn’t know why it responded to her touch. She just knew, with the same bone-deep certainty that drove her to jump in front of a gun, that the talisman washersto wield. That it had been waiting for this moment, when she claimed it with purpose.
She spoke to the talisman, both pleading and commanding.Protect him. Protect Zach.
In her hand, the Windstone blazed with light. Not heat.IIlumination—bright and clean and ancient.
The storm answered.
Wind surged from the cliff face and the roiling clouds, spiraling up from the ocean below, carrying the fury of a thousand waves.
Everything converged.
The air itself became solid, pressing against Emma’s skin with the weight of the atmosphere made manifest. Her hair whipped in a dozen directions at once. Rain stopped falling and started flying—horizontal, diagonal, directions that defied physics. Yet the wind never touched Emma or Zach behind her.
Marcus’s eyes widened. He pulled the trigger.
The blast hit him before the bullet left the barrel.
Not an explosion. Not fire, or electricity, or any mundane force. This was something older, something that existed before humans gave names to the elements. Pure elemental force, directed andfurious.
Marcus flew backward.
His feet left the ground. For one protracted moment, he hung in the air like a puppet with cut strings, arms windmilling, the gun spinning away into the storm.
Then gravity remembered its job.
